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Dear Bruce and All, It has been an honor and pleasure to be part of this prestigious group, almost since its initiation. Please, let me draw your attention to some of our experience in real-time soil water dynamics in the vadose zone of the field and vegetable crops, over large areas, in correlation to the real-time evapotranspiration, rainfall, irrigation, and water table data. For the last five years I have been working on the real-time soil water dynamics in the vadose zone, over large areas, using multisensor capacitance sensors and monitoring system. In 1994, coming from the USDA-ARS Water Management Research Laboratory at Fresno, CA., I introduced the new system, and the potential advantages for research studies, to the scientists of the USDA-ARS-Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC). Dr. James L. Starr has used the first two systems in his long term corn tillage experiment (every 10 min, all year around) from 1995 through 1998. Jim and I published our first results in the SSSAJ and in the Soil and Tillage Research in 1997 and 1998. The search for real-time soil water dynamics at BARC extended fast to the current sixteen monitoring systems. The EnviroScan systems are spread over large areas in experiments studying: the environmental impact of sustainable and conventional vegetable production; preferential flow of agrochemicals to the surface and to the groundwater; optimization of agricultural production systems and their influence on riparian areas, etc. Multidisciplinary research teams are using them successfully. Our results, presented this year at the 16th World Soil Congress and at the ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting, show that the domain of using real-time soil water dynamics in the vadose zone, in correlation to other real-time water balance data, could be further developed. Real-time water dynamics data might be used to: validate or recalibrate the existing water balance models over large areas; validate profile soil water content data obtained from current and future remote sensing data; monitor waste disposal sites; etc.. As my time of visiting scientist is coming to an end, I would like to share with you my experience and cooperate in future projects, both in the US and internationally. Please, use the address of my company for research, technology transfer and consulting: PALTIN Intl. Inc., 6309 Sandy Street, Laurel MD, 20707; Phone/Fax: (301) 725-0604; e-mail icpaltin@bellatlantic.net. I do wish to ALL of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year! Dr. Ioan C. Paltineanu visiting scientist USDA, ARS, BARC, NRI, ECL Bldg. 007, Room 224, BARC-West 10300 Baltimore Ave. Beltsville, MD 20705-2350 U. S. A. Phone: 301-504-5032 Fax: 301-504-5048 email: ipaltin@asrr.arsusda.gov http://hydrolab.arsusda.gov/ecl